By JESSICA SILVER-GREENBERG,  The Wall Street Journal

Amid all the junk mail pouring into your house in recent months, you might have noticed a solicitation or two for a “professional card,” otherwise known as a small-business or corporate credit card.

If so, watch out. While J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.’s Ink from Chase card, Citigroup Inc.’s Citibank CitiBusiness/AAdvantage Mastercard and the others might look like typical plastic, they are anything but.

Charlie Harak, of Melrose, Mass., says he was surprised to learn that he had a “professional card” that wasn’t covered by the Card Act.
Professional cards aren’t covered under the Credit Card Accountability and Responsibility and Disclosure Act of 2009, or Card Act for short. Among other things, the law prohibits issuers from controversial billing practices such as hair-trigger interest rate increases, shortened payment cycles and inactivity fees—but it doesn’t apply to professional cards.

Until recently professional cards largely had been reserved for small-business owners or corporate executives. But since the Card Act was passed in March 2009, companies have been inundating ordinary consumers with applications. In the first quarter of 2010, issuers mailed out 47 million professional offers, a 256% increase from the same period last year, according to research firm Synovate.

The Card Act’s strictures have squeezed banks’ profits and their ability to operate freely. By moving cardholders out of protected consumer cards and into professional cards, banks might recoup some of the revenue they have lost.

“By pushing professional cards to consumers who otherwise wouldn’t want them, card issuers can get around some of the provisions of the Card Act,” says Josh Frank, a senior researcher at the Center for Responsible Lending, a consumer group.

Several solicitations from J.P. Morgan have ended up in the mailbox of John and Gloria Harrison, a retired military couple who live in Destrehan, La., outside New Orleans. Mrs. Harrison says she gets an offer for an Ink From Chase card, geared toward small businesses, almost every month. She says she finds this puzzling because her husband retired in 1986 and doesn’t own a business.

.”It just drives us crazy to get all these solicitations,” Mrs. Harrison says.

“While it is possible for someone to receive an application who is not a small-business owner, that is not our intent,” says Laura Rossi, a Chase spokeswoman. She adds that “mailings for small-business cards have not spiked but have remained relatively consistent.”

While the Card Act bars issuers from raising rates on existing balances unless a cardholder is at least 60 days late with a payment, there isn’t any such prohibition on the Ink From Chase card, one of several business cards offered by the bank. The card agreement says Chase is free to implement a default rate of 29.99% if a customer is late by just one day on a payment.

Chase’s Ms. Rossi says its small-business credit cards have “added benefits and features designed specifically for small-business owners.”

Holders of Capital One Financial’s Business Platinum Card, meanwhile, can see their low introductory interest rates spike if they are just three days late with payment twice in a 12-month period, far less than the 60-day notice period required under the Card Act.

Capital One has “voluntarily adopted many of the Card Act provisions for our small-business customers,” says Pam Girardo, a spokeswoman for the bank. “In order to be able to offer lower rates and expand access to credit for our small business customers, we will continue to exercise risk-based repricing.”

Card issuers also are tinkering with the way they credit payments to professional cards. The Card Act stipulates that issuers must apply payments in excess of the minimum to the balances with the highest interest rate. But on Citibank’s Citibusiness card, payments are applied to low-rate balances first—making it more difficult for cardholders to reduce their more expensive balances.

Card issuers are easing their application requirements for professional cards, too. In July, for example, Chase sent out an offer for an Ink From Chase Cash Business Card that required much less information than earlier offers.

In January, mailings for the card asked prospective cardholders to provide the name of their company, the nature of the business, its address and its federal employer identification number. In the July mailing cardholders merely had to check a box that said “Yes, I am a business owner” or “Yes, I am a business professional with business expenses.”

“We are always looking for ways to simplify our application,” says Ms. Rossi, the Chase spokeswoman. “All applicants are required to confirm they are a small-business owner or someone who is authorized to charge expenses to the business.”

Some consumer advocates say the increased mailings, coupled with offers requiring only minimal business information, will lead to more customers ending up unprotected and unaware. “A lot of consumers really don’t know the difference, and some of the wording on the offers can be ambiguous,” says Beverly Harzog of Cardratings.com, a consumer-education website.

Charlie Harak, an energy attorney in Melrose, Mass., noticed a few months ago that he wasn’t getting the full 21 days between when the statement on his Citi Professional Card was mailed and when payment was due, as mandated under the Card Act.

“For business/professional cards, we give between 20 and 25 days after the cycle date depending on where the account’s particular cycle falls in the calendar,” says Citibank spokesman Samuel Wang.

Mr. Harak, 49 years old, says he was surprised to learn that he had a professional card that wasn’t covered by the Card Act.

“It wasn’t pitched to me as a different kind of card,” Mr. Harak says. “I used it for my regular purchases and didn’t realize I was out in the cold with this one.”

Corrections & Amplifications
The introductory rate on Capital One’s Business Platinum Card can spike if cardholders are three days late with payment twice in a 12-month period. An earlier version of this article incorrectly suggested the rate would spike if a cardholder was late once during that period.

Also, an earlier version of this article cited Capital One’s World MasterCard as an example of an atypical credit card; the article now references J.P. Morgan Chase’s Ink card from Chase.

Source: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704913704575454003924920386.html#articleTabs=article

Saturday 04 September 2010

by: Amy McMullen, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed

After watching Wednesday’s Arizona gubernatorial debate, I noticed a comment on my Facebook page opining that if Gov. Jan Brewer wins the election after her abysmal and somewhat bizarre debating performance, we in Arizona have officially entered the Twilight Zone. Of course, many of us remember this old TV show, where reality is bent and outcomes are usually very scary. To me, this was a fitting analogy because, aside from Brewer’s deer-in-the-headlights, several-second silence in her opening statement, I’ve never seen so much stumbling, poor use of grammar and downright juvenile debating tactics as were employed by our governor last night. Now I’m only assuming that Brewer’s community college radiological technician training, which makes up the sum of her formal education, did not likely include debate as part of its curriculum … but after last night’s dismal performance, it’s now very clear why she’s stonewalled Terry Goddard’s repeated requests for additional debates outside of this one required event. Since her performance is pretty much a mirror of her acumen as governor, it is also pretty obvious that, failing a major drop in her present 20-point lead in the polls over Goddard, her election will prove once and for all that Arizona’s voters are more concerned about grossly overblown immigration threats than the welfare of our failing state.
A recent report by the Pew Hispanic Trust shows that illegal immigration numbers are down by over two-thirds, and recent reports by the FBI have indicated that crime is significantly down in Arizona. Another government report shows that undocumented immigrants actually improve the economy and boost wages and jobs. The drumming up of fear tactics on the part of Brewer, including her now infamous “beheadings in the desert” claim (which she refused to address last night both during and after the debate) has now been revealed to be the only ace she is holding to guarantee her election bid. Her mendacity about balancing the state budget, an inability to articulate how she plans to bring jobs to the state and her sidestepping the fact that her top advisers have well-publicized ties to prison corporations – prisons that are now shown to be unsafe to the general public – all added up to show a woman who is sadly out of her depth and is clutching the life preserver of the “immigration problem” as her only hope. Since this one issue is what catapulted her ahead of her primary opponents when she was seriously flagging back in April (due to all the aforementioned inabilities to govern adequately and a very un-Republican tax increase), it’s hardly surprising that this now shopworn tactic is one she’s planning with which to stick.

Click here to watch video

So, why are so many voters willing to overlook our climbing unemployment, unsafe prisons, repeated untruths about everything from headless bodies to a father’s WWII service and a failing economy? How can so many ignore a failing economic situation that was in part brought on by Brewer herself as a result of her signing into law SB 1070, and which has continued to decline under her watch? Why is there such a backlash against people who enter this state without documents or overstay visas in an attempt to find a better life with more opportunities? I’ve written before about the racial undertones that lead people to support the now enjoined law SB 1070, but I also think this goes beyond racism for some people. This is an unwillingness to face facts and a need to stick with the scapegoating, which has, once again, overtaken our country in yet another chapter of our long, dismal history of immigrant bashing, especially during bad economic times.
Or, perhaps, we have simply stepped through the looking glass, where wrong is right and up is down. Whether or not this is the case, if we’re not careful, we will find that we have indeed crossed over into the Twilight Zone and the next four years will be very scary indeed.

Source: http://www.truth-out.org/arizona-politics-you-have-now-entered-twilight-zone62952#comment-219288

By DOUG WHITEMAN, Associated Press Writer Doug Whiteman, Associated Press Writer – Wed Sep 1, 4:24 pm ET

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Elizabeth Torres was stung when her 19-year-old son said he’d been turned down for a state-issued Ohio identification card because his birth certificate from Puerto Rico was considered invalid.

“We’re not illegal aliens, we are citizens of this country,” Torres said. “We have everything, all the documents and all that, but we are not treated as such.”

People born in Puerto Rico are finding that older birth certificates from the U.S. territory are not being accepted when applying for a state ID or driver’s license at the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles, a reaction to concerns about possible fraud that a national Hispanic group said smacks of racial discrimination.

Since early April, the bureau has refused to accept Puerto Rican birth certificates issued before Jan. 1 as proof of identity and date of birth. The policy reflects a law on the island that will invalidate all older birth certificates on Sept. 30, the agency said.

“They are not placing credibility in their certificates,” said Ohio BMV spokeswoman Lindsay Komlanc said. “For an agency that uses a birth certificate as one of the primary documents to be able to verify identity, that’s something we have to look very hard at.”

Ohio already has dealt with cases in which Puerto Rican birth certificates were used fraudulently. In a scheme uncovered in 2008, Puerto Rican certificates were being sold to illegal immigrants in Virginia, and they were then brought to Ohio to obtain state ID cards, Komlanc said.

At the time, federal prosecutors said that Ohio was chosen because it had looser procedures for obtaining identification at licensing bureaus. A federal judge in Harrisonburg, Va., last year sentenced one Columbus woman to a year in prison, while another — a clerk at a licensing office — received 30 months’ probation.

Puerto Rico’s law change followed raids last year against a criminal ring that stole thousands of birth certificates and other identifying documents from several schools in the U.S. commonwealth. The island is now requiring about 5 million people — including 1.4 million in the U.S. — to apply for new birth certificates with security features.

Puerto Rico began issuing the replacements July 1, but the older birth certificates are still valid for another month, Puerto Rico Secretary of State Kenneth McClintock said.

McClintock said he contacted Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland’s deputy legal counsel last week to discuss the issue, arguing that the state was disregarding Puerto Rico’s law.

Ohio has the nation’s 10th largest Puerto Rican population, according to 2006-2008 Census data. The state had an estimated 26,498 residents born in Puerto Rico; Florida ranked first with 337,408, followed by New York with 318,239.

Based on current information, the Ohio governor’s office sees no reason to change the state’s policy, Strickland spokeswoman Amanda Wurst said.

“It is in an effort to address the safety and well-being of Ohioans and to avoid issuing identification cards with fraudulently acquired birth certificates,” Wurst said.

Brent Wilkes, executive director of the 115,000-member League of United Latin American Citizens in Washington, D.C., charged that any state that has already decided the existing certificates are invalid is acting out of bias.

“Puerto Rico is being victimized because of the fact you’ve got so much attention on Latino immigrants in the United States,” Wilkes said. “Puerto Ricans are not immigrants, but they’re still Latinos.”

Komlanc countered that Ohio also is cautious with other birth certificates, noting that the state won’t accept a version of Indiana’s birth certificate that does not include gender.

Representatives from Wilkes’ group met Wednesday with Thomas Stickrath, director of the Ohio Department of Public Safety, which oversees the BMV. He explained the agency’s position and appreciated the opportunity for dialogue, Komlanc said. The meeting opened channels of communication, said Marilyn Zayas-Davis, Ohio legal adviser for LULAC.

North Dakota also places restrictions on Puerto Rican birth certificates and will not accept them without backup documentation. The policy has not been much of an issue, said Jamie Olson, a spokeswoman for the state’s transportation department.

Other states have handled the Puerto Rican certificates less stringently. For example, officials said Kansas will honor birth certificates from Puerto Rico through Sept. 30, and Hawaii will accept them at least through that date.

Tom Jacobs a spokesman for the Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles, said the Puerto Rican government’s directive caused four days of confusion, “but where we stand now, we will accept Puerto Rican birth certificates.”

So will Arkansas, said Michael Munn, assistant commissioner of revenue for operations and administration. He said problems with validity of Puerto Rican birth certificates had arisen in fewer than 10 cases in Arkansas since the issue was brought to his office’s attention early in the summer.

In Ohio, Torres’ son, Alfredo Pagan, doesn’t drive, but needed an Ohio ID card to take his high school equivalency test, his mother explained in her native Spanish.

“My son wants to get a job and help me with the house expenses and all that,” said the 40-year-old Torres, a hotel housekeeper who left Puerto Rico 12 years ago and lives in Cleveland.

Ohio is willing to work with people born in Puerto Rico to see if they have other forms of documentation, such as a passport or school records, that can verify their identity, Komlanc said.

She said that part of the process apparently was not followed properly in the case of Alfredo Pagan, and the BMV is trying to contact him.

___

Associated Press Writers Danica Coto in San Juan, Puerto Rico; Sandra Chereb in Carson City, Nev.; John Hanna in Topeka, Kan.; Mark Niesse in Honolulu; and, Tom Parsons in Little Rock, Ark., contributed to this report.

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Elizabeth Torres was stung when her 19-year-old son said he’d been turned down for a state-issued Ohio identification card because his birth certificate from Puerto Rico was considered invalid.

“We’re not illegal aliens, we are citizens of this country,” Torres said. “We have everything, all the documents and all that, but we are not treated as such.”

People born in Puerto Rico are finding that older birth certificates from the U.S. territory are not being accepted when applying for a state ID or driver’s license at the Ohio Bureau of Motor Vehicles, a reaction to concerns about possible fraud that a national Hispanic group said smacks of racial discrimination.

Since early April, the bureau has refused to accept Puerto Rican birth certificates issued before Jan. 1 as proof of identity and date of birth. The policy reflects a law on the island that will invalidate all older birth certificates on Sept. 30, the agency said.

“They are not placing credibility in their certificates,” said Ohio BMV spokeswoman Lindsay Komlanc said. “For an agency that uses a birth certificate as one of the primary documents to be able to verify identity, that’s something we have to look very hard at.”

Ohio already has dealt with cases in which Puerto Rican birth certificates were used fraudulently. In a scheme uncovered in 2008, Puerto Rican certificates were being sold to illegal immigrants in Virginia, and they were then brought to Ohio to obtain state ID cards, Komlanc said.

At the time, federal prosecutors said that Ohio was chosen because it had looser procedures for obtaining identification at licensing bureaus. A federal judge in Harrisonburg, Va., last year sentenced one Columbus woman to a year in prison, while another — a clerk at a licensing office — received 30 months’ probation.

Puerto Rico’s law change followed raids last year against a criminal ring that stole thousands of birth certificates and other identifying documents from several schools in the U.S. commonwealth. The island is now requiring about 5 million people — including 1.4 million in the U.S. — to apply for new birth certificates with security features.

Puerto Rico began issuing the replacements July 1, but the older birth certificates are still valid for another month, Puerto Rico Secretary of State Kenneth McClintock said.

McClintock said he contacted Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland’s deputy legal counsel last week to discuss the issue, arguing that the state was disregarding Puerto Rico’s law.

Ohio has the nation’s 10th largest Puerto Rican population, according to 2006-2008 Census data. The state had an estimated 26,498 residents born in Puerto Rico; Florida ranked first with 337,408, followed by New York with 318,239.

Based on current information, the Ohio governor’s office sees no reason to change the state’s policy, Strickland spokeswoman Amanda Wurst said.

“It is in an effort to address the safety and well-being of Ohioans and to avoid issuing identification cards with fraudulently acquired birth certificates,” Wurst said.

Brent Wilkes, executive director of the 115,000-member League of United Latin American Citizens in Washington, D.C., charged that any state that has already decided the existing certificates are invalid is acting out of bias.

“Puerto Rico is being victimized because of the fact you’ve got so much attention on Latino immigrants in the United States,” Wilkes said. “Puerto Ricans are not immigrants, but they’re still Latinos.”

Komlanc countered that Ohio also is cautious with other birth certificates, noting that the state won’t accept a version of Indiana’s birth certificate that does not include gender.

Representatives from Wilkes’ group met Wednesday with Thomas Stickrath, director of the Ohio Department of Public Safety, which oversees the BMV. He explained the agency’s position and appreciated the opportunity for dialogue, Komlanc said. The meeting opened channels of communication, said Marilyn Zayas-Davis, Ohio legal adviser for LULAC.

North Dakota also places restrictions on Puerto Rican birth certificates and will not accept them without backup documentation. The policy has not been much of an issue, said Jamie Olson, a spokeswoman for the state’s transportation department.

Other states have handled the Puerto Rican certificates less stringently. For example, officials said Kansas will honor birth certificates from Puerto Rico through Sept. 30, and Hawaii will accept them at least through that date.

Tom Jacobs a spokesman for the Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles, said the Puerto Rican government’s directive caused four days of confusion, “but where we stand now, we will accept Puerto Rican birth certificates.”

So will Arkansas, said Michael Munn, assistant commissioner of revenue for operations and administration. He said problems with validity of Puerto Rican birth certificates had arisen in fewer than 10 cases in Arkansas since the issue was brought to his office’s attention early in the summer.

In Ohio, Torres’ son, Alfredo Pagan, doesn’t drive, but needed an Ohio ID card to take his high school equivalency test, his mother explained in her native Spanish.

“My son wants to get a job and help me with the house expenses and all that,” said the 40-year-old Torres, a hotel housekeeper who left Puerto Rico 12 years ago and lives in Cleveland.

Ohio is willing to work with people born in Puerto Rico to see if they have other forms of documentation, such as a passport or school records, that can verify their identity, Komlanc said.

She said that part of the process apparently was not followed properly in the case of Alfredo Pagan, and the BMV is trying to contact him.

___

Associated Press Writers Danica Coto in San Juan, Puerto Rico; Sandra Chereb in Carson City, Nev.; John Hanna in Topeka, Kan.; Mark Niesse in Honolulu; and, Tom Parsons in Little Rock, Ark., contributed to this report.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100901/ap_on_re_us/us_puerto_rico_licenses

September 3, 2010
By Tami Chavez

Hollywood, California – Chicano Radio Network U.S.A. also known online as CRNLive announces the encore presentation’s of the Mark Guerrero’s “Chicano Music Chronicles”. Join Mark two times a week as he features the same show all month long, assuring that you will be able to catch the program every Sunday afternoon at 2:00pm PST, and then again on Wednesday night at 8:00pm PST.

Mark Guerrero has an expertise and unique perspective on Chicano music that makes him the ideal host for Chicano Music Chronicles says CRNLive’s President/CEO, Frank Miranda. He’s been a musician and band leader since his first teenage band, Mark & the Escorts, who were part of East L.A.’s legendary “Eastside Sound” in the early 1960s. He’s also the son of the “Father of Chicano Music,” the late great Lalo Guerrero. Mark has a B.A. degree from Cal State Los Angeles in Chicano Studies and hosts the biggest and most respected website on Chicano music, markguerrero.com. Mark has also done lecture/performances on Chicano music at universities and other venues such as, U.C. Berkeley, U.C. Santa Barbara, National Hispanic University, Cal State L.A., Cal State Fullerton, El Paso Community College, San Diego Mesa College, Barrio Station in San Diego, and the Marin County Civic Center. He’s also been a consultant on Chicano music for museums such as the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles and the Experience Music Project in Seattle, Washington. Mark is also a singer/songwriter who has recorded for major labels such as Ode, Capitol, MCA, and A&M Records and his songs have been recorded by Herb Alpert, Trini Lopez, Chan Romero, Lalo Guerrero and others. Mark has performed with and shared the stage with the top Chicano artists, as well as legendary classic rock artists. He continues to perform and tour as a concert artist.

On each edition of Chicano Music Chronicles, Mark interviews the featured artist about his or her music and career and plays his favorite recordings by that artist. Each show is highly entertaining and informative and serves as a lasting piece of Chicano music history. Mark considers his Chicano Music Chronicles show an important part of his work and legacy and looks forward to adding to the catalogue of shows in his continuing effort to chronicle the rich history of Chicano music for present and future generations. Listen to Chicano Music Chronicles and hear the great talents, their stories, and music in all genres from Latin to Rock, R&B to Funk, and Doo Wop to Punk. To contact Mark directly, please email to: Mark@CRNLive.com.

Press Contact: Star Sound Productions – Frank Mills

Phone 480-748-1793

E-mail CMC@CRNLive.com

On his Fox show tonight, Glenn Beck dedicated a segment to attacking Dolores Huerta, the 80-year-old labor activist who founded the United Farm Workers with César Chávez. Huerta has been widely recognized for her work, including by the Girl Scouts and the Community of Christ, which shares roots with Mormons.

Beck introduced the segment by claiming that “all the people around our president come from the same creepy circle of radical 60s types.” Beck evidently objects to Huerta’s participation in a Labor Department campaign informing workers, including unauthorized immigrants, about the wage and labor standards to which they are entitled. Beck didn’t go into detail about the Labor Department initiative, which is interesting since Beck himself frequently asserts that illegal immigrants are being “enslaved” by corporations. For instance, this is from the July 29 edition of his radio show:

BECK: Illegal immigration is slavery. You are enslaving people. These giant corporations — the government is doing it for voters. The corporations are doing it for cheap jobs. They don’t have to provide health care. They don’t have to provide — they don’t have to provide anything. They can screw with these people any way they want, put their hands in a meat grinder; “Oh really? What are you going to do?” It’s slavery.

Labor Secretary Hilda Solis and Dolores Huerta are trying to fight the very problem that Beck routinely decries. Contrary to Beck’s claim that employers “don’t have to provide anything,” the courts have established that undocumented workers are protected by the Fair Labor Standards Act and the Labor Department has long held a policy of enforcing labor laws without regard to immigration status. The problem is that exploited unauthorized immigrants don’t know that. Solis and Huerta are trying to make sure they do.

Sure, Huerta may be trying to stop the same exploitation that infuriates Beck. But Beck finds her political views distasteful, so who cares about the substance of her work; she’s getting the witch-hunt treatment.

From the September 1 edition of Fox News’ Glenn Beck:

Posted on 24 March 2009 by cesar
By JESSE WASHINGTON – 15 hours ago

The ax fell without sound or shadow: Tatiana Gallego was suddenly called into human resources and laid off from her job as an admissions counselor for a fashion college.

“The way people tried to explain it to me was, I was the last one hired so I was the first one out,” said Gallego, 25, who had worked there for 17 months.

Last hired, first fired: This generations-old cliche rings bitterly true for millions of Latinos and blacks who are losing jobs at a faster rate than the general population during this punishing recession.

Much of the disparity is due to a concentration of Latinos and blacks in construction, blue-collar or service-industry jobs that have been decimated by the economic meltdown. And black unemployment has been about double the rate for whites since the government began tracking those categories in the early 1970s.

But this recession is cutting a swath through the professional classes as well, which can be devastating to people who recently arrived there.

Since the recession began in December 2007, Latino unemployment has risen 4.7 percentage points, to 10.9 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Black unemployment has risen 4.5 points, to 13.4 percent. White unemployment has risen 2.9 points, to 7.3 percent.

Gallego, whose parents were born in Colombia, graduated from the University of Rhode Island. Her mother is self-employed, and her stepfather works in construction.

She was stunned when she was told to pack up and leave by the end of the day because enrollment was down at her New York City school. She said she had recently received a positive performance review, and her bosses were planning to send her to a conference.

“Maybe I just don’t know that much about the business world, because I felt like I did more, I went above and beyond more than other people in my office did,” she said.

William Darity, a professor of economics and African-American studies at Duke University, said that “blacks and Latinos are relative latecomers to the professional world … so they are necessarily the most vulnerable.”

“We don’t have those older roots to anchor us in the professional world,” Darity said. “We don’t have the same nexus of contacts, the same kind of seniority.”

There are no recent government statistics that measure jobs lost by race and income. But Darity and others believe that professional Latinos and blacks are more likely to lose their jobs in the recession.

“Many times blacks and Latinos are the last to be hired, so naturally they are first to be fired,” said Jerry Medley, who has been in the executive search business for 30 years.

“Not saying that it’s racism,” Medley said, “but if a manager or a senior executive is looking at a slate of individuals and has to let one of them go, chances are he or she will not let the person go that they spend a lot of time with at the country club or similar places.”

The less wealth you have, the harder unemployment hits. Darity cited 2002 data that showed black households with a median net worth of $6,000, Latino households with a median of $8,000, and white households with a median of $90,000.

Philip Salter was creative director for a Chicago advertising firm where about 75 percent of the revenue came from a contract with a Fortune 500 company to create ads targeted at minorities. When the firm lost that contract plus two general-market accounts, Salter’s job evaporated.

“When companies cut back their ad dollars, minority budgets are where they start,” said Salter, 62, who is black. “Unfortunately in this business, most clients just view (minority advertising) as an overlay or meeting an obligation that social organizations might place on them.”

His last day was in January 2008. With alimony payments and two kids in college, Salter moved from his four-bedroom house into an apartment and has scraped by on consulting gigs.

Salter’s mother worked as a housekeeper, and his father was a custodian. Before his divorce, Salter’s stepdaughter and her four children lived with him for many years.

Professional blacks “don’t usually start out with an inheritance,” he said. “On top of that, quite often things happen in our families to cause us stress. An unexpected child or grandchild, drug problems. When you try to set aside money to put your kids through college, all of a sudden you have to say, ‘I can’t let this family member fall and become homeless.’

“I would say eight out of 10 people I know have a similar situation.”

Then there are those clinging to the bottom of the ladder, laid off from lower-paying jobs.

For them, “once the primary breadwinner loses his or her job, there isn’t much backup,” said Harry Holzer, former chief economist for the Department of Labor who now is a professor at Georgetown University and the Urban Institute.

The Great Depression ended after the government created a “safety net” of wide-ranging social-assistance programs. Since then, the overall unemployment rate peaked in 1981-1982, at 10.8 percent on a monthly basis, Holzer said.

Economists believe we could reach that level in the current recession, Holzer said — but he added that unlike in the 1980s, today the safety net has been largely dismantled by restrictions placed on welfare and unemployment eligibility.

“You worry about populations of concentrated poverty and having less access to the safety net,” Holzer said. “It could lead to social unrest, higher crime rates — no one knows.”

“It will obviously have an effect on the crime rate,” said Maya Wiley, director of the Center for Social Inclusion, which recently issued a report stating that nonwhites are bearing the heaviest burden during the recession.

“There also are all sorts of health-related issues connected with that,” Wiley said. “We could see higher rates of everything from homicides to tuberculosis.”

As racism wanes and blacks and Latinos advance up the economic ladder, many cite this progress as proof that it would be unfair to offer race-based remedies to those left behind. Even many minorities have embraced themes of self-help and personal responsibility.

Others, like the Duke professor Darity, say that America “has never come to terms with racial economic inequality.”

“The current situation,” Darity said, “is reinforcing and widening those inequalities.”

Posted on 02 September 2010 by oscar
From: AP

The U.S. Justice Department sued Sheriff Joe Arpaio on Thursday, saying the Arizona lawman refused for more than a year to turn over records in an investigation into allegations his department discriminates against Hispanics.
The lawsuit calls Arpaio and his office’s defiance “unprecedented,” and said the federal government has been trying since March 2009 to get officials to comply with its probe of alleged discrimination, unconstitutional searches and seizures, and having English-only policies in his jails that discriminates against people with limited English skills.
Arpaio had been given until Aug. 17 to hand over documents it first asked for 15 months ago.
Arpaio’s attorney, Robert Driscoll, declined immediate comment on the lawsuit, saying he had just received it and hadn’t yet conferred with his client.
Arpaio’s office had said it has fully cooperated in the jail inquiry but won’t hand over additional documents into the examination of the alleged unconstitutional searches because federal authorities haven’t said exactly what they were investigating.
It’s the latest action against Arizona by the federal government, which earlier sued the state to stop its strict new immigration law that requires police officers to question people about their immigration status.
“The actions of the sheriff’s office are unprecedented,” said Thomas Perez, assistant attorney general for the department’s civil rights division. “It is unfortunate that the department was forced to resort to litigation to gain access to public documents and facilities.”
The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court in Phoenix and names Arpaio, the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office and the county.
Arizona’s new law — most of which a federal judge has put on hold — mirrors many of the policies Arpaio has put into place in the greater Phoenix area, where he set up a hot line for the public to report immigration violations, conducts crime and immigration sweeps in heavily Latino neighborhoods and frequently raids workplaces for people in the U.S. illegally.
Arpaio believes the inquiry is focused on his immigration sweeps, patrols where deputies flood an area of a city — in some cases heavily Latino areas — to seek out traffic violators and arrest other offenders.
Critics say his deputies pull people over for minor traffic infractions because of the color of their skin so they can ask them for their proof of citizenship.
Arpaio denies allegations of racial profiling, saying people are stopped if deputies have probable cause to believe they’ve committed crimes and that it’s only afterward that deputies find many of them are illegal immigrants.
The sheriff’s office has said half of the 1,032 people arrested in the sweeps have been illegal immigrants.
Last year, the federal government stripped Arpaio of his special power to enforce federal immigration law. The sheriff continued his sweeps through the enforcement of state immigration laws.
Last year, the nearly $113 million that the county received from the federal government accounted for about 5 percent of the county’s $2 billion budget. Arpaio’s office said it receives $3 million to $4 million each year in federal funds.
In a separate investigation, a federal grand jury in Phoenix is examining allegations that Arpaio has abused his powers with actions such as intimidating county workers by showing up at their homes at nights and on weekends.

Source: http://mylatinonews.com/2010/09/feds-sue-arizona-sheriff-in-civil-rights-probe/

Jeremy Hsu
LiveScience Senior Writer

Mass extinctions have served as huge reset buttons that dramati
livescience.com – Thu Sep 2, 2:30 pm ET
cally changed the diversity of species found in oceans all over the world, according to a comprehensive study of fossil records. The findings suggest humans will live in a very different future if they drive animals to extinction, because the loss of each species can alter entire ecosystems.

Some scientists have speculated that effects of humans – from hunting to climate change – are fueling another great mass extinction. A few go so far as to say we are entering a new geologic epoch, leaving the 10,000-year-old Holocene Epoch behind and entering the Anthropocene Epoch, marked by major changes to global temperatures and ocean chemistry, increased sediment erosion, and changes in biology that range from altered flowering times to shifts in migration patterns of birds and mammals and potential die-offs of tiny organisms that support the entire marine food chain.

Scientists had once thought species diversity could help buffer a group of animals from such die-offs, either keeping them from heading toward extinction or helping them to bounce back. But having many diverse species also proved no guarantee of future success for any one group of animals, given that mass extinctions more or less wiped the slate clean, according to studies such as the latest one.

Then and now

Looking back in time, the diversity of large taxonomic groups (which include lots of species), such as snails or corals, mostly hovered around a certain equilibrium point that represented a diversity limit of species’ numbers. But that diversity limit also appears to have changed spontaneously throughout Earth’s history about every 200 million years.

How today’s extinction crisis – species today go extinct at a rate that may range from 10 to 100 times the so-called background extinction rate – may change the face of the planet and its species goes beyond what humans can predict, the researchers say.

“The main implication is that we’re really rolling the dice,” said John Alroy, a paleobiologist at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. “We don’t know which groups will suffer the most, which groups will rebound the most quickly, or which ones will end up with higher or lower long-term equilibrium diversity levels.”

What seems certain is that the fate of each animal group will differ greatly, Alroy said.

His analysis, detailed in the Sept. 3 issue of the journal Science, is based on almost 100,000 fossil collections in the Paleobiology Database (PaleoDB).

The findings revealed various examples of diversity shifts, including one that took place in a group of ocean bottom-dwelling bivalves called brachiopods, which are similar to clams and oysters. They dominated the Paleozoic era from 540 million to 250 million years ago, and branched out into new species during two huge adaptive spurts of growth in diversity – each time followed by a big crash.

The brachiopods then reached a low, but steady, equilibrium over the past 250 million years in which there wasn’t a surge or a crash in species’ numbers, and still live on today as a rare group of marine animals.

Counting creatures better

In the past, researchers have typically counted species in the fossil record by randomly drawing a set number of samples from each time period – a method that can leave out less common species. In fact two studies using the PaleoDB used this approach.

Instead, Alroy used a new approach called shareholder sampling, in which he tracked how frequently certain groups appeared in the fossil record, and then counted enough samples until he hit a target number representative of the proportion for each group.

“In some sense the older methods are a little like the American voting system – the first-past-the-post-winner method basically makes minority views invisible,” said Charles Marshall, a paleontologist at the University of California, Berkeley, who did not take part in the study. “However, with proportional systems, minority views still get seats in parliament.”

Marshall added that the study was the “most thorough quantitative analysis to date using global marine data.” But he added that researchers will probably debate whether the PaleoDB data represents a complete-enough picture of the fossil record.

Nothing lasts forever

The idea that rules of diversity change should not come as a surprise for most researchers, according to Marshall.

“To me, the really interesting possibility is that some groups might not yet be close enough to their caps to have those caps be manifest yet,” Marshall told LiveScience. Or “evolutionary innovation” might happen so quickly that new groups emerged to increase overall diversity, even if each sub-group reached a cap on diversity.

If anything, the record of past extinctions has shown the difficulty of predicting which groups win out in the long run. “Surviving is one thing and recovering is another,” said Marshall, who wrote a Perspectives piece about the study in the same issue of Science.

One of the few consistent patterns is that growth spurts in diversity can apparently happen at any time, according to Alroy. He added that the background extinction of individual species has also remained consistent – the average species lasts just a few million years

Of course, the ongoing extinction crisis of modern times goes far beyond the background extinction rate. Alroy noted that it could not only wipe out entire branches of evolutionary history, but may also change the ecosystems shaped by each species.

That means today’s species matter for environments around the world, and so humans can’t simply expect replacements from the diverse species of the future.

“If we lose all the reef builders, we may not get back the physical reefs for millions of years no matter how fast we get back all the species diversity in a simple sense,” Alroy said.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20100902/sc_livescience/massextinctionthreatearthonvergeofhugeresetbutton

Colorado has not gone as far as Arizona in enforcing immigration laws, but a series of measures passed in 2006 show this state is not afraid to get in the enforcement game.
State law requires local law-enforcement officials to report all arrestees believed to be undocumented. In domestic-violence cases, a report to immigration officials isn’t made until a person is convicted.

An earlier version of the state law, Senate Bill 06-090, would have required officers to report every person they suspected was in the country illegally – precisely what the controversial Arizona law does.

Another measure passed in 2006 mandated Colorado State Patrol to have some troopers deputized to enforce federal immigration law. The result was the 26-member Immigration Enforcement Unit, which has troopers stationed around the state, including Durango.

Among state routes heavily used by human and drug smugglers is U.S. Highway 160.

Lance Clem, spokesman for the state Department of Public Safety, said the 2006 laws were a response to a rash of crashes on state highways involving vanloads of illegal immigrants being smuggled cross country.

News reports from 2006 brim with such crashes, some involving multiple fatalities.

In March of that year, as the growing season was getting under way, in just 24 hours dozens of suspected illegal immigrants were involved in six separate crashes on icy roads in the state.

“They were just such terrible crashes,” Clem said.

Two other pieces of legislation made human trafficking and smuggling felonies under state law.

Clem said the laws and the immigration-enforcement unit have choked off the underground railroad of illegal immigrants.

“We’ve seen that pretty much come to a stop,” he said. “I think the unit has achieved what the Legislature was looking for.”

Arizona’s law – which a federal judge’s order has prevented, for the time being, from going into full effect – may change the situation in Colorado by causing smugglers to circumvent Arizona.

There is some evidence that already is happening.

Holly Landgren, resident agent in charge for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said the number of smuggling loads being apprehended by authorities has surged in recent months.

“We had gone a period of about 18 months where we did not work any smuggling loads,” she said during an interview at her office. “Now we’ve been getting contacted once or twice a month, just in Durango.”

She said this typically happens in spring but did not discount the Arizona crackdown as a possible factor.

On patrol

Latino-rights activists decry Colorado’s immigration-enforcement law, arguing it does far more than target human smugglers.

Eddie Soto, director of Los Companeros program of the San Juan Citizens Alliance, said it is tantamount to legalizing racial profiling in the state.

“They pretty much trampled the rights of thousands of Latinos that live in Colorado,” he said.

Soto was speaking from KDUR’s radio studio during his Immigrant Music Project show. In the background, tunes from the likes of Celia Cruz, Rio Ritmo and Los del Garrote were playing.

The son of U.S. diplomats, Soto grew up in Mexico but is a U.S. citizen.

He travels to Denver frequently, and he said he has been stopped much more often since the 2006 laws were enacted.

“It’s creating a lot of fear amongst the immigrant community not to trust police officers, which is going to create more victims,” he said.

He said the intent of the immigration-enforcement unit was to go after traffickers and smugglers, but instead it is targeting their victims.

“Unfortunately, it’s become a numbers game. They just want to deport as many people as they can,” he said.

He said the unit’s own numbers support this.

In 2009, 44 cases of human smuggling – which entails providing transportation – and three cases of human trafficking – which involves the selling of people – were investigated while 521 illegal immigrants were processed.

Soto said the majority of immigrants swept up in the dragnet agree to voluntary departure and leave the country without ever knowing what rights they may have had.

Clem denied activists’ accusations that the State Patrol unit exists to hunt down illegal immigrants.

“They think it’s the state ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement), and that’s just not true,” he said. “We’re trying to do our best to straighten out some of these myths.”

He said all the cases that troopers investigate arise from routine patrols of the state highways.

A request from The Durango Herald to interview the local trooper deputized to enforce immigration was denied.

Colorado State Patrol Capt. Martin Petrik, who works out of the same office, said Trooper Wayne Jones isn’t going into businesses checking the papers of their employees.

“He’s working the road like any other trooper,” he said.

When to make the call

The new Colorado laws drew local police officers and sheriff’s deputies into the enforcement push, too.

Although Durango city councilors in 2004 passed a resolution declaring no city resources would be used to enforce immigration law, the 2006 laws trump the city measure.

Officers are required to report to ICE anyone they arrest whom they believe is in the country illegally.

Durango Police Chief David Felice and Capt. James Spratlen, during an interview in the chief’s office, explained how that plays out on the street. Particularly tricky is assessing when the threshold of probable cause has been crossed.

Spratlen said, “Let’s say I pull over an illegal person from France, from wherever. They can’t speak English. Well that’s one indicator – one bean that goes in the pot. (I) ask for a driver’s license. They don’t have one. And then the car is registered in someone else’s name.”

When these factors – beans in the pot – cumulatively would lead a reasonable person to believe that a person is illegal, the officer has met the standard.

Some factors weigh more heavily than others: If a person, when asked, admits to being undocumented, then no further evidence is needed.

But short of that, it’s a bit murky.

Spratlen said for him, not having a driver’s license and not speaking English would not be enough to constitute probable cause. But the threshold can vary among officers.

Felice said, “It’s hard to say what that bright line is. … People’s circumstances are different.”

If the arrestee is facing felony charges, he or she is booked into jail, and officials there contact ICE.

If the charge is a misdemeanor, then the police officer who stopped the person makes the report to ICE.

If ICE’s database finds no history or record, then the arrestee likely will be allowed to go on his or her way with a summons to appear on the misdemeanor charge.

Spratlen said that for someone to be let go, he or she must have valid identification. This doesn’t guarantee the person is legal – in some states, such as New Mexico, it is possible to get a driver’s license without producing a birth certificate or passport.

If the query shows the person previously has been deported or is wanted, then the individual will go to jail.

Through the system

La Plata County Sheriff’s Office Capt. Michael Slade, who oversees the jail, said officials there contact ICE about anyone who is booked and is foreign-born.

“We’re not trained on knowing if they’re here legally or if they’re here illegally,” he said.

Once contacted, immigration officials have 48 hours to determine what they want to do with a detainee.

Some of those determined to be undocumented will stay to face their local charges. Others will go to the state’s nearest immigration court in Aurora.

The La Plata County jail is the only facility in the Four Corners authorized to hold people for ICE. The review process took more than a year, and the contract with the agency was just signed in June.

“Their standards are pretty tough,” Slade said.

Detainees being held for ICE wear red uniforms instead of orange or stripes like the rest of the jail population.

The Southern Ute Indian Tribe’s jail, which used to hold detainees for ICE, no longer does.

Escaping scrutiny

Interviews with immigrants, advocates and officials all support the view that immigration authorities here aren’t hunting down illegal immigrants.

“We don’t go out and search out people just because they are in the country illegally,” Landgren said. “Oftentimes, the way they come into contact with us is because they have committed some kind of violation and a local law-enforcement agency will intervene.”

She said many people don’t realize that ICE enforces much more than just immigration law. Her investigators – she declined to say how many – also are working cases of narcotics trafficking, child pornography, customs fraud and others.

“The immigration piece, it’s a very important part of what we do – and it is only part of what we do,” she said.

This doesn’t mean that otherwise law-abiding illegal immigrants can rest easy. ICE does investigate local employers believed to be using undocumented labor.

And there’s another factor that leaves them exposed.

Under state law, it’s illegal to drive without a license, but residents can’t get a driver’s license without proving lawful presence in the country.

Without a driver’s license, illegal immigrants can’t register their vehicles, which also is required by state law.

Soto said Colorado has set up a vicious circle whereby immigration status – a civil matter under U.S. law – is converted into a criminal matter under state law.

“They’re creating this whole problem to make it look like these people are criminals,” he said.

Felice, the police chief, said that outside the force’s obligation under state law, his officers aren’t worried about a person’s status.

“When we’re trying to solve crimes, we need witnesses, and we want people to come forward and say they witnessed an event without fear that we’re going to be challenging their immigration status,” he said.

Posted on Aug 19th 2010 12:30PM by Emily Tan of Spinner

Richard “Scar” Lopez, a founding member of Cannibal and the Headhunters, died in a Garden Grove, Calif., hospital on July 30 after losing his battle with lung cancer, the L.A. Times reports. He was 65.

Lopez helped start the East Los Angeles vocal group, which rose to fame with the ’60s hit ‘Land of 1000 Dances.’ The song spent 14 weeks on Billboard’s Top 100 and the group went on to appear on ‘American Bandstand’ and open for the Rolling Stones, Righteous Brothers and the Beatles.

“[Lopez] was an inspiration to the group as far as getting me started,” bandmate Robert Jaramillo told the L.A. Times. “I owe him that.”

While Lopez enjoyed touring with the Beatles, he got into hot water with Eddie Davis, the band’s manager, who didn’t want the singer gambling with the Liverpool quartet. Ultimately, the conflict caused Lopez to quit the band. “[Davis] stormed back there and started yelling at me in front of everyone,” Lopez said in an interview. “I’m from East L.A., and I don’t take that from nobody. So we never spoke to each other ever again. I was so angry at him for embarrassing me in front of the Beatles that I made up my mind right then and there I would not continue on the tour.”

After leaving the group, Lopez took on a number of jobs including landscaping parks in Los Angeles. According to Hector A. Gonzalez, current owner of Rampart Records, Lopez dealt with a drug problem, which he eventually overcame.

In 1996, Lopez reunited at the Chicano Music Awards when they were inducted into the Chicano Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The reunion was sans Frankie “Cannibal” Garcia, who died that same year. The group continued to occasionally perform together until 2004 with replacements for Garcia and Joe ‘Yo Yo’ Jaramillo who passed in 2000.

Lopez is survived by his father, a sister, two children and two granddaughters.

Watch Cannibal and the Headhunters perform “Land of a thousand dances”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlTPFERD8zs&feature=player_embedded

Service Information:

Memorial Services for Richard “Scar” Lopez from Cannibal & the Headhunters will be held at the Destiny Community Church, International at 7227 Greenleaf Avenue,. Whittier, CA. The Memorial will start at 3 pm and end approximately 7 pm. Pastor Charlie Gallegos will make an opening and welcoming statement. The facility has handicap access, free parking, and beautiful setting. Water and refreshments will be served.